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* Stefanie Hugh-Donovan is a doctoral research student at Heythrop College, University of London. Her main research interests are the life and oeuvres of Olivier Clément, Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christianity, Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council, the wider ecumenical dialogue between Christians, Muslims and Jews.1 Clément published some thirty books and numerous articles, and had editorial involve-ment with the theological journal Contacts from 1959. He was awarded honorary doctor-ates from the Institute of Theology of Bucharest and the Catholic University of Louvain. 2 See the various studies in Christian Badilita and Charles Kannengiesser (eds.), Les pères de l’Église dans le monde d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 2006). 3 Clément used the term ‘passeur’ to describe Vladimir Lossky and Paul Evdokimov, theologians of the Russian diaspora, in his book Orient-Occident: Deux Passeurs: Vladimir Lossky et Paul Evdokimov (Geneva, 1985).

Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 63(1-2), 233-254. doi: 10.2143/JECS.63.1.2149621© 2011 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved.

AN EASTERN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE ONEUROPE AND CATHOLICISM

A STUDY IN THE THOUGHT OF OLIVIER CLÉMENT

STEFANIE HUGH-DONOVAN*

INTRODUCTION

Olivier Clément (1921-2009), French Orthodox lay theologian, historian and author of numerous books and articles on the history, theology, ecclesi-ology and spirituality of the Eastern Orthodox Church, achieved high liter-ary acclaim.1 As a French European, he wrote from a unique historical and geographical position on matters of contemporary relevance and interest to thinkers and theologians of Western European cultures. He added signifi-cantly to the great corpus of creative oeuvres that flowed from Russian pio-neers of the Orthodox renewal in France who arrived in Paris after the Russian Revolution. His understanding of Cristianity broadened and matured throughout his life and his thought continues to make its mark in the twenty-first century; he can be recognised as a ‘Contemporary Church Father, between East and West’.2 During his life he was a passeur,3 one who could journey between the intellectual shores of East and West, communi-cating with leaders and theologians of both Orthodox and Catholic Tradi-tions on vital questions of the day: modernity and Christian tradition; the

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234 STEFANIE HUGH-DONOVAN

4 On Russian Diaspora: R. H. Johnston, New Mecca, New Babylon: Paris and the Russian Exiles, 1920-1945 (London, 1988); O. Clément, ‘Avenir et signification de la diaspora orthodoxe en Europe occidentale’, Contacts, 30 (1978), pp. 259-283. [English Translation: ‘The Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe: Its Future and Role’, Sobornost, 7 (1978), pp. 576-587]. 5 On the encounter between Clément and V. Lossky see: O. Clément, ‘Vladimir Lossky, théologien orthodoxe: L’interprète de Maître Eckhart’, La vie spirituelle, 30 (1999), pp. 53-60. Vladimir Lossky, 1903-1958, went into exile with his father and family in 1922. He chose to live and work in France, and while remaining very Russian, his entire theo-logical work was written in French. His patristic theology is firmly against nationalism, anti-ecumenism, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. He made close links with many Catholic theologians, Congar, Danielou, de Lubac and others who were preparing for the Second Vatican Council. See N. Lossky, ‘Theology and Spirituality in the Work of Vladimir Lossky’, Ecumenical Review, 51 (1999) pp. 288-293. 6 Nicolas Berdiaeff, 1874-1948, Russian religious and political philosopher; a Marxist at University, he was exiled during the expulsion of intellectuals by Lenin on the so-called ‘philosopher’s ship’ and settled in Paris. He became a theologian, formed collaborative contacts with Catholic theologians and scholars, and contributed to the Orthodox revival in Paris. On Berdiaeff: for an early form of dialogical, theological studies, albeit in the character of the time, see those by B. Schultze, Die Schau der Kirche bei Nikolai Berdiajew, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 116 (Rome, 1938); B. Schultze, ‘Nicholas Alexandrovich Berdayaev and His Work’, Eastern Churches Quarterly, 8 (1949), pp. 41-53, and also more recently P. Aubert, Nicolas Berdiaeff: une approche autobiographique et anthropologique (Paris, 2011). 7 On the history and background of St Sergius, see A. Kniazeff, L’Institut Saint-Serge de l’academie d’autrefois au rayonnement d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1974).

role of the Church in a contemporary post-Christian society; atheism and Christian hope.

Historically, the young Clément stood at a momentous axial point of change in the Church and in the West, at a time of ideological and political upheaval, war, death and nihilism. The creative teaching, intellectual and spiritual inspiration of the theologians of the Russian Orthodox diaspora4 acted as a formative theological influence on Clément. He knew many of these writers personally as friends, and he regarded them with the esteem of a disciple towards a ‘master’. His search for a meaning to life led him from atheism to an exploration of Eastern religions and finally to the discovery of Christianity through the writings of two great Russian thinkers, Vladimir Lossky5 and Nicolas Berdiaeff.6 At the age of thirty he was baptised as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, in the francophone parish of the Patriarch of Moscow in Paris in 1951, but later moved to Constantinople’s Russian Exar-chate at St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute,7 where for many years


AN EASTERN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE ON EUROPE AND CATHOLICISM 235

8 Athenagoras I (1886-1972), Archbishop of North and South America 1930-1948 then elected Patriarch of Constantinople. See O. Clément, Dialogues avec le Patriarch Athéna-goras I (Paris, 1969); O. Clément, ‘Dalla scoperta di Cristo alla Via Crucis con il Papa’, in La Nuova Europa, 11/5, (Milan, 2002), pp. 19-25; Clément, ‘Atenagora I (1886-1972) ossia l’Ortodossia al servizio dell’unità’, Oriente Christiano 13 (1973), pp. 1-2, 79-99; Clément, ‘Il Patriarcato Ecumenico al servizio dell’unità ortodossa e dell’unità cristiana’, Nicolaus, 27 (2000), pp. 5-13. 9 Clemént, La Vérité vous Rendre Libre (Paris, 1977). On the history of the Ecumenical Patriarch see A. Nanakis, Histoire du patriarcat œcuménique de Constantinople au XXe siècle (Paris, 2009), pp. 25-50. 10 On John Paul II’s papacy (1978-2005), see Clément’s Rome Autrement: Un Orthodox face á la papauté (Paris 1997) and his response to John Paul II’s Encyclical, Ut unum sint (1995) in which the Pope invited discussion on the Petrine office. Clément favoured the conciliar structure of Orthodoxy but criticised Orthodox nationalist models. On the Papacy from Orthodox perspective: J. Famerée, ‘Le ministère du pape selon l’Orthodoxie’, Revue théologique de Louvain, 37 (2006), pp. 26-43. 11 Dumitru Staniloae, 1903-1993, Eastern Orthodox priest and theologian. He worked 45 years translating the Philokalia into Romanian: see C. Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 18. Staniloae was imprisoned by the Communist government, 1958-1963. In 1968 he lectured at Oxford, UK, and received an honorary degree from St Sergius Institute, 1981. 12 Andrea Riccardi, born in Rome, 1950, and founder of the St Egidio Communty in Rome in 1968. The Community works for evangelisation, solidarity with the poor, ecumenism, justice and peace. It organised the Inter-religious Meeting for Peace with John Paul II in 1986 at Assisi. 13 O. Clément, Taizé, un sens á la vie (Paris, 1997). Trans. Ateliers et Presses de Taizé, Taizé, a Meaning to Life (Chicago, 1997).

he was a Professor of Moral Theology, and a teacher at the Louis le Grand school in Paris. Clément was deeply gifted with faith, and as that faith was lived out and matured, he became motivated by a passionate desire for Chris-tians of the East and West to be brought into closer communion and unity. He grew in stature as an Eastern Orthodox thinker in dialogue with Western thought, engaging with eminent religious leaders on important contempo-rary spiritual, ecclesial and cultural problems, including discourses with ecu-menical Patriarchs Athenagoras I8 and Bartholomew I9 of Constantinople, Pope John Paul II,10 Dumitru Staniloae,11 Andrea Riccardi12 and Brother Roger of Taizé.13

Clément’s French roots and geographical locus uniquely equip him, as an Orthodox Christian thinker, to make his distinctive and significant contribu-tion as author, poet, compassionate literary critic and observer of humankind and culture. He remained firmly rooted in the Orthodox Church yet viewed



14 See A. O’Mahony’s study on the important Eastern Christian presence in the Southern part of the Italian Peninsula and Sicily in ‘“Between Rome and Constantinople”: The Italian-Albanian Church: A Study in Eastern Catholic History and Ecclesiology’, Interna-tional Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 8 (2008), pp. 232-251, p. 247, who states that ‘Benedict XVI, conscious that the future of Christianity in the new emerging Europe will depend upon rapprochement between Eastern and Western Churches… would be open to a new Eastern Catholic structure in Italy which might help to build bridges with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, a key relationship in the reli-gious leadership of Europe’. 15 This new encounter between Orthodoxy and the West raised awareness of the need ‘to possess what is “one’s own” in order to benefit from what is “the other’s”’; see M. Cun-ningham and E. Theokritoff, ‘Who are the Orthodox Christians? A Historical Introduction’, in Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 1-18, p. 14, and p. 18, n. 12: Basil Zenkovsky, quoted in Hildo Bos, ‘Orthodox Youth and Ortho-dox Culture: The Genesis of Syndesmos, 1923-1953’, available on www.syndesmos.org. 16 S. Hugh-Donovan, ‘Olivier Clément on Orthodox Theological Thought and Ecclesiol-ogy in the West’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 10 (2010), pp. 116-129.

Orthodoxy and modernity through the lens of his early homeland and cul-ture. He loved Mediterranean France and the Orthodox world of the Medi-terranean countries, especially Greece, the Lebanon, and Italy.14 Clément’s theological, political and philosophical findings were shaped by his own diverse experience of European culture and history. Major issues raised by Clément on Orthodoxy in the West are seen against the values represented by the geographical, political, religious and historical landscape of his own early background, which formed an important context for the trajectory of his life journey and thought. He was born into a Cévenole, agnostic and non-ecclesial culture in a predominantly Protestant area of France; he had little familiarity with Catholic culture and faith, and this affected his outlook and inhibited his openness to Catholicism. He returned frequently in his writing to the themes of atheism and the spiritual crisis faced by contemporary Euro-pean society. Clément worked tirelessly to establish mutual respect between Eastern and Western Churches, foreseeing that future unity was possible without the loss of identity of either.15 On the one hand he sought to estab-lish unity among Christians and strove especially for understanding and col-laborative sharing between the Eastern and Western Churches, on the other, he presented a powerful Christian message to contemporary ‘post-Christian’ society and a compelling answer to atheistic nihilism, which has been a sig-nificant contemporary context for both the Orthodox Church and the West.16



17 Ibid., p. 118. 18 O. Clément, Petite boussole spirituelle pour notre temps (Paris, 2008), p. 109. 19 See E. McCaffrey, ‘Memory and Collective Identity in Occitane: The Cathars in His-tory and Popular Culture, History and Memory’, History and Memory, 13 (2001), pp. 114-38; Charles-Olivier Carbonell. ‘Les historiens protestants libéraux ou les illusions d’une histoire scientifique (1870-1914)’, Cahiers du Fanjeaux, 14 (1979), pp. 185-204.

The aim of this paper is to bring the thought of Olivier Clément into conversation with the origins of his search for an ecclesial home and his elec-tion for Orthodoxy, a choice made in France, where the national religion is Catholicism. The religious history of the Languedoc continued to exert a strong influence on local twentieth century culture in the area of Clément’s upbringing, and this impacted on his subsequent choices, a fact that is high-lighted in his writings. The trajectories of his thought flow from and along the furrows of this foundational context.17 While remaining both European and French, Clément brings the distinctive Eastern Orthodox perspective to his work of evangelisation; he is faithful to scriptural and patristic sources but also able to decipher the modern world in the light of Pentecost. Clé-ment’s choice of Orthodoxy will be explored, posited within the historical moment of the diaspora and preceding Russian ecclesial events.

A SPIRITUAL BIOGRAPHY

Olivier-Maurice Clément was born on 17 September 1921 at Aniane in the Languedoc region of France into a family with socialist and atheist beliefs. The Mediterranean terrain, climate and culture of village life formed the backdrop for his earliest memories, to become the geographical area with which he identified most closely throughout his life, calling himself ‘un Fran-çais méditerranéen’.18 Historically, southern French Christianity was tragically fragmented and the area of Languedoc surrounding Aniane had become largely anti-Catholic, resulting partly from the conflict and persecution of the twelfth century movement of the Cathars.19 The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1255) and Inquisition that followed lived on in the generational memory of the people in the locality of Clément’s childhood. Different Christian confessions developed a self-understanding and identity over against the claims of the ‘heretical other’. Innocent III’s intervention in the Occitan may have paved the way for Protestantism three centuries later, and



20 Alphonse Dupront, 1905-1990, French historian who specialised in the Middle Ages and modern era. He defended his doctoral thesis entitled, Le Mythe de croisade. Etude de sociologie religieuse, in 1956, published in 1977 with Gallimard, Paris, in 2 vols. In 1970 he founded the Centre d’anthropologie religieuse européene at l’EHESS (Paris). 21 F. D’Amour, Olivier Clément: Un Passeur (Québec, 2003), p. 33. 22 Clément refers often to Dostoïevski and Solzhenitsyn in his spiritual autobiography, L’Autre Soleil: autobiographie spirituelle (Paris, 1975). 23 Ibid., p. 56. 24 On sobornost: see G. Cioffari, La Sobornost nella teologia russa. La visione della chiesa negli scritori ecclesiastici della prima metá del XIX siglo (Bari, 1978). 25 Alexei Khomiakov (1804-60) an early representative of the ‘Slavophile’ movement. On Khomiakov: P. O’Leary, The Triune Church: A Study in the Ecclesiology of A. S. Xomjakov (Freibourg, 1982).

the subsequent development of socialist atheism, the cultural setting into which Clément was born. In the same era as the Cathars were crushed, the fourth crusade (1202-1261), summoned by Innocent III in response to the Muslim capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, and mainly manned by French knights, turned away from the Pope’s objective and infamously sacked the Eastern Churches in Constantinople.

Clément’s own familial background was non-religious, although his mother’s family had been Protestants and his father’s family were Catho-lics. From childhood to adulthood he had no experience of an ecclesial life or community, and no opportunity to observe or encounter the person of Christ of the Gospels. As a young man he became a student of history under Alphonse Dupront20 at the University of Montpelier. Dupront taught that history is rooted in the sacred, for him man was above all ‘Homo religiosus’.21 Dupront was able to speak of a reality that reached beyond matter and the rationality of atheism; for the first time Clément was introduced to intelligent discourse on the personal experience of the mystery of ‘being’ and the transparency of things. A new way of interpret-ing history that involved religion as a topic of intellectual debate was opened for Clément, who later identified the idea developed through Dupront with the dramatic narratives of human life portrayed by the great Russian authors he admired;22 human history had flourished from a reli-gious foundation which formed a sacred link of human persons with each other and with being, l’Etre.23 This way of viewing community character-ises the Orthodox notion of sobornost,24 a term proposed by the nineteenth century Russian religious thinker, Alexei Khomiakov,25 that can be



26 Cunningham and Theokritoff, ‘Who are the Orthodox Christians?’, p. 11. 27 Among others noted in this context, Sergius Bulgakov, Paul Evdokimov who ran hos-tels for refugees, Mother Maria Skobstova who died in Ravensbruck. 28 Cosmogony might be described as the study of the origin of the universe. Cf. D’Amour, Clément, p. 37. 29 Ibid., p. 39.

described as a ‘unity in freedom, the unity of an interdependent living body’.26 It became an important concept for Orthodox theology, carrying the social message of concern for the other.27 The concept of sobornost defined as freedom, unity and ‘conciliarity’ was an important characteristic of the émigré theology of the Russian diaspora, and it would seem, became an important influence in Clément’s choice for Orthodoxy as a young teacher in Paris. The collaborative sharing of personal gifts by lay people and clergy for the building of the Body of Christ, an important aspect of Orthodox thinking within the Paris school, would later help Clément iden-tify with Orthodoxy as an ecclesial home and ‘space’.

There was a relationship above and beyond material evolution that Clé-ment sought in poetry and cosmogony.28 Dupront taught that acquisition of knowledge is a road to all being, not simply the accumulation of data, but an honest amazement mixed with marvel at the discovery of what is authen-tic and real. The act of knowing is stripped of pride, desire and possession of modern rationality, a detachment which Clément himself acquired. Orthodox theology helped Clément to reconcile the split between spirit and matter that had occurred since the Enlightenment in the West, which had led to atheism; it also introduced him to a ‘knowledge’ of the kenosis of Christ in the Incarnation and on the cross, which had been experienced in a certain way by his Russian friends in exile, and later mystically by Clément himself. Ascetic detachment, kenosis and plenitude are part of Clément’s conversion experience; in a ‘night of reason, a kenosis … to find again the creative, biological, cosmic, astral, anxieties and hopes, freedoms … flowing towards unity in God or in short, all the fullness of humankind.’29

FREEDOM AND ABSENCE

Clément was thus drawn to Orthodoxy and not Catholicism, the national ecclesial denomination of France. The neo-Scholasticism of much of



30 B.D. Marshall. ‘Ex Occidente Lux? Aquinas and Eastern Orthodox Theology’, in Mod-ern Theology (Oxford, 2004), p. 23. 31 Ibid. 32 Clément, L’Autre Soleil, p. 9. See also Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (London, 2008). Like Clément, Williams is an excellent literary critic.

contemporary Catholic theology, like Protestantism, seemed to him too ‘dry’; the exclusiveness of concepts that prevailed before Vatican II, of a fortress Church that lacked openness to the world outside its boundaries, that regarded itself as the ‘perfect society’, too closed. Clément had entered the prevailing contemporary experience of emptiness, of nihilism, of athe-ism and despair before Christian conversion turned his understanding of life, both heart and intellect, towards Christ. Like many French intellectu-als of the 1950-1970 period who, it would seem, were not aware of the French Catholic Revival, he regarded Catholicism as static; he could not see that the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas led the person into a true par-ticipation of life in the Holy Spirit. Strong criticism of Aquinas’ theology had existed in the Byzantine Church since the fourteenth century, while twentieth century Orthodox theologians, in particular Vladimir Lossky, close friend of Clément, saw Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology as the cause for the separation between eastern and western Christianity.30 Protestant and Orthodox theologians shared a polemical dialectic against Aquinas’s theol-ogy, a factor that may have acted as a catalyst for ecumenical dialogue between Orthodox and Protestant Churches at that time. Since Vatican II some Catholic theological opposition to Aquinas has arisen also,31 but this surely is against misunderstandings of certain aspects of neo-Thomism pre-sented in Catholic neo-scholastic theology. As Clément matured as a Chris-tian, he entered into discourse and developed friendships with Pope John Paul II and other prominent Catholic theologians during the Second Vati-can Council and the post-conciliar period, yet it may be that he never lost this questioning stance towards Catholicism.

Clément’s own experience of mystery resonates with that of Dostoevsky’s description of Macarius,32 a man who Clément describes purified his heart in search of the ‘lost centre’. Macarius finally found l’autre soleil shining as for a day that never fades, when prayer, which is the essence of things, rises from the heart, a mystery both terrible and marvellous that yet brings joy and the discovery that everything is in God, the pilgrim is himself in God,



33 Clément, L’Autre Soleil, p. 9. 34 Ibid. 35 B. Osborne, ‘Orthodoxy in a United Europe: The Future of Our Past’, in Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Europe, eds. J. Sutton and W. van Bercken (Leuven, 2003), p. 17.

longing to be received by God. As a child, Clément was disturbed by the ‘nothingness’ his parents believed followed life, yet their goodness, loyalty and integrity manifested in him a palpable experience of ‘Absence’; the ques-tion of Absence became a pre-occupation and a factor in leading Clément to recognition of the person of Christ and the search for an ecclesial home. Clément came to believe that the apparent absence of God opens the space for an interior longing, a space which enables each person to comprehend that God is our freedom; that his silence renders us free.33 All those people known to him, who seemed to be just passing by as faces on a train to nowhere, did in fact have a destiny: the communion of saints in communion with Christ, was a reality.

Clément’s understanding from childhood was that the space of atheism led inexorably towards nothingness; his conversion experience was that metanoia of the heart makes the future possible, he knew the words of Jesus for each of us are, ‘Go and sin no more’, that there is no longer death, that He searches for us; as Clément himself experienced, he was sought by Him, and found.34 The sense of fruitful ‘space’ and ‘absence’ that Clément found in the mystery of Orthodoxy allowed conversion to flow into him; the ecclesiological space was an Absence. A contemporary Orthodox thinker reflects: ‘Theology proper transcends the realm of the discursive reason, and can in the end only be apophatic, that is, can only express its fundamental truths in paradox and negation.’35

PROVIDENCE AND HISTORY

To situate Clément’s contribution to Orthodox theological and ecclesio-logical thought in the West, it is necessary to consider the historical legacy of Orthodoxy before and during the Russian diaspora. Prior to the Revolu-tion the Church in Russia had been weakened by the changes imposed by Tsar Peter the Great; the Patriarchate had been abolished and the Church became virtually a department of state governed by a synod whose head was



36 D. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church: Under the Soviet Regime 1917-1982, I (New York, 1984), p. 19. 37 Ibid., p. 24 38 Ibid., p. 20. 39 Ibid., p. 22. 40 Ibid., p. 22. 41 Sergius Bulgakov, 1871-1944. Son of a priest, he lost his faith, became a Marxist pro-fessor of political economy, but later became a priest and theologian of the Paris school. He was considered by many to be the most creative and important theologian of the renewal. He brought the Orthodox tradition into dialogue with modernity; see M. Plekon, ‘The Russian religious revival and its theological legacy’, The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology, p. 204. Also Plekon, Living Icons: Persons of faith in the Eastern Church (Indiana, 2002), pp. 29-58, in which the author describes Bulgakov as a ‘Political Economist and Priest, Marxist and Mystic’; A. Nichols, Wisdom from Above: A Primer in the Theology of Father Sergei Bulgakov (Leominster, 2005). 42 Plekon, Living Icons, p. 31, cites Bulgakov’s words to the council.

appointed by the Tsar.36 The Church thus lost its ‘horizontal cohesiveness and local dynamism in her bureaucratized, pyramidal subordination to a Synod consisting of powerless bishop-figureheads and a secular bureaucratic overseer, an outsider’.37 While the pre-Revolutionary Church, as the official State Church, appeared powerful, its wealth had been drastically reduced through nationalisation of monastic estates by Catherine II in 1763-64.38 By 1914 a majority of the intelligentsia were either atheists or indifferent to faith, a condition reflected in society as a whole. Many of these however became disaffected with Marxism and a spiritual revival began to flourish that became part of the reform movement that culminated in the Moscow Council of 1917-18 which sought to re-establish a canonical and conciliar structure in the Church. A request was made to Tsar Nicholas II seeking permission to convoke a sobor, a ‘national council made up of all diocesan bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church … which should deliberate on all ecclesiastical questions and should elect the Patriarch.’39 It was the 1917 Revolution however that brought the sobor into being.40 With the end of the monarchic system and no elected patriarch or local conciliar system to undertake ecclesial administration, the Church was divided and weak. The date for the sobor was set for 15/28 August 1917; a crucial speech made by the ‘Christian Socialist’ Sergius Bulgakov,41 a former Marxist, argued for the election of a Patriarch at this ‘turning point, before an unknown future and the frightful present’.42 Tikhon Belavin, Metropolitan of Moscow, became



43 Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, p. 33. 44 M. Plekon, ‘Relativism and Fundamentalism: An Eastern Church Perspective from the Paris School and Living Tradition’, in Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position, ed. Peter L Berger (Grand Rapids, MI, 2009), pp. 180-209. 45 N. Lossky, ‘The Fruitfulness and Contradictions of the Russian Emigration’, in The Holy Russian Church and Western Christianity, eds. G. Alberigo and O. Beozzo (London 1996), p. 66. 46 Ibid., p. 68.

Patriarch Tikhon, the first patriarch in over two hundred years. On 5 November Lenin nationalised all Church land; later decrees deprived the Church of the right to own property, confiscated church and monastic buildings, nationalised all bank accounts belonging to religious associations, and banned the teaching of religion in schools. The sobor was unable to complete its legislative and liturgical reform plans before it was closed;43 it did however succeed in re-establishing the canonical conciliar ecclesiastical structure from the local parish to the patriarch, with the election of bishops by diocesan councils of clergy and laity.

After the Revolution, waves of emigrants to the West brought into France an élite group of Russian Orthodox theologians who were alive with a per-sonal, intellectual and spiritual renewal of faith that contrasted dramatically against the background of the Bolshevik Revolution and the censorship of Tsarist Russia; Sergius Bulgakov, who arrived in 1923, collaborated with Nicolas Lossky and Nicolas Berdiaeff among many others, and became the first Dean of St Sergius Institute in Paris in 1925. The ‘Russian Paris’ expe-rienced the challenging encounter between tradition and modernity, and soon also faced divisions stemming from political and cultural positions, that led to separations between the Moscow patriarchate and the diaspora Russians.44

THE EMIGRATION: NEO-PATRISTIC SYNTHESIS

Between 1917 and 1922 the principal Orthodox Churches, separated from their mother Church in the wake of the emigration worldwide, established their own jurisdictions, thus creating ‘jurisdictional divisions contrary to Orthodox ecclesiology’,45 and as a result Russian émigrés, mostly in Paris, ‘divided into three jurisdictions which were not in communion with one another’.46 To displaced Russians, the Revolution must have appeared as a



47 E. Behr-Sigel, 1907–2005, born in Alsace of Protestant mother and Jewish father. She became Orthodox and helped Fr Lev Gillet found the first French-language Orthodox Church. As an Orthodox theologian she is well remembered for her reflections on women in the Orthodox Church. See also O. Lossky’s biography, Vers le jour sans déclin: Une vie d’Élisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907-2005) (Paris, 2007); English version Jerry Ryan (ed.), Michael Plekon (tr.), Towards the Endless Day: A Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907-2005) (Indiana, 2010). 48 R. Williams, ‘Sharp Questions for the Orthodox’, The Times (April 2008). 49 The Times, Obituary, ‘Elisabeth Behr-Sigel: Matriarch of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe’, (December 2005). M. Plested affirms this title in his review of O. Lossky’s biography of Behr-Sigel, (see n. 47), in ‘Foreign Language Books’, The Authors. Journal Compilation (Cambridge, 2008), p. 613. 50 Plested, ‘Foreign Language Books’, p. 614. 51 Clément, ‘Préface’, in O. Lossky, Vers le jour sans déclin, p. 8.

personal and national disaster. What appears to be calamitous, may unfold under the direction of the Holy Spirit as a creative Pentecostal flourishing. The movement of the religious philosophers and theologians during the Russian diaspora of the nineteen-twenties was seen by Elizabeth Behr-Sigel47 and others as providential; it opened a way for a fruitful encounter between Orthodox Christian tradition and contemporary western culture. Like Clé-ment, she was a convert to Orthodoxy, although from a different back-ground; her father was a German protestant from Alsace and her mother from an Eastern European Jewish family. An accomplished Orthodox theo-logian, who Rowan Williams describes as having an unconventional, intensely contemporary and deeply traditional Orthodoxy that shaped several genera-tions of Orthodox thinkers;48 she became recognised as the ‘Matriarch of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe’.49 In Olga Lossky’s view, Behr-Sigel did not see her conversion to Orthodoxy, as ‘a rejection of the West but rather as the establishment of a bridge between the sundered Christians of East and West’.50 She passionately supported ecumenical dialogue. Clément looks back in 2007 and pays tribute to Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, whose Christian witness was important to him at a time when he was considering entry into the Orthodox Church. He acknowledges both her holiness and the spirit of openness and dialogue that characterised her vision for the Church, and her significant contribution to the development of ecumenical friendships between Christians of the East and West.51 She became a co-editor of the journal Contacts with Clément, taught at the St Sergius Institute and after World War II attended courses in theology taught by Lev Zander, Olivier



52 M. Plekon, ‘To Become Permeable to Christ: Elisabeth Behr-Sigel’s Theological Vision’, The Ecumenical Review, 61 (2009), p. 169. 53 Lossky, Vers le jour sans déclin, p. 203. 54 Lossky, ‘Fruitfulness’, p. 68. 55 Ibid. p. 69 (with reference to Serge Bulgakov, Orthodoxy, 1930). 56 Plekon, Living Icons, p. 32. 57 Lossky, ‘Fruitfulness’, p. 71.

Clément and Paul Evdokimov at St Sergius.52 She recalls her first meeting with Olivier Clément, the new Director of the Editorial committee, and was struck by his charismatic and radiant personality. His friendly and welcoming openness created a climate of camaraderie at the heart of the Contacts enterprise.53

Many of the émigré Russian theologians would engage well with French culture and language; they did not interpret ‘their presence abroad as a sim-ple accident of history’,54 rather they discovered their very ‘Russianness’ was a wealth and richness called to encounter other cultures; this brought them recognition that their Orthodoxy depended neither on nationality nor cul-ture. Serge Bulgakov expressed this important ecclesial theological truth in the 1930’s, a truth ratified three decades later at Vatican II with reference to the Catholic Church: ‘Orthodoxy is the Church of Christ on earth. The Church of Christ is not an institution but the new life with Christ and in Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit.’55 A particular aspect of the paradigm evident in these Russian theologians of the diaspora, whether writing or teaching in Russian or integrating with French culture by writing in French, is that they retained their Russianness. They expressed the genius of their country, a genius that had illuminated the thinkers of the Russian religious renaissance in the nineteenth century, and flourished in the light of holiness, suffering, and the revelation of the true person in the great classics of Russian literature, culture, music and art. Other gifted Russians arrived, artists and musicians: Chagall, Kandinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky among others, who contributed to a context that has been called the ‘Russian Silver Age’.56 Maxime Kovalevsky, 1903-1988, who is recognised as the most bril-liant composer of liturgical music in the emigration, while ‘remaining very Russian, has devoted his life to a French expression of Orthodoxy’,57 thus creating with his life work a true ecclesial synthesis of East and West. The second generation of Orthodox theologians wrote and thought in French;



58 On emergence of Lay-theologians in the modern Orthodox Tradition from which perspective Clément cannot be understood see B. Jioultsis, ‘Les théologiens laïcs dans l’Église orthodoxe contemporaine. Approche sociologie, pastorale et thélogique’, Irénikon, 60/2 (1987), pp. 177-192. On the history of the French Orthodox Parish see É. Behr-Sigel: ‘La fondation de la première paroisse orthodoxe de langue française (1928-1929)’, La vie spirituelle, 730 (1999), pp. 65-78.

they completed their studies in France, often at the Sorbonne, but held firmly to their Russian, Patristic and Byzantine heritage.

Rather than calamity, the geographical and cultural division that occurred in Orthodox ecclesiology following the Revolution had, and continues to have, the potential of emerging as a developing enrichment of Orthodoxy through the expression of individual and national diversity in the genius of each host nation. The Holy Trinity is a paradigm of maximum unity in diversity, the Church is the church of the Holy Trinity; it can only be strengthened by an openness to diversity. In a particular way Olivier Clé-ment by remaining both French and European follows this (theo)anthropo-logical paradigm, characteristic of the lives of the Russians for whom he considered himself to be a disciple: he brings the genius of France, its lit-erature, poetry, music and suffering, the intellectual genius of the Enlighten-ment (which he considers rather than a disaster to be the ‘daughter’ of Chris-tianity) and his own particular gift of genius, time and place, into a creative synthesis of Christian faith, compassion, heart and intellect, with French culture and the West. He too discerns the signs of the times, and in his particular case, with humility, patience and deep insight. For the Russians of the Diaspora, ‘uprooting has been an occasion for discovering that their Russianness could be a source of wealth called to a fertile encounter with other cultures, and that their Orthodoxy came before their Russianness,’ in conclusion, Orthodoxy therefore was not to be found in any particular cul-ture but could be expressed in any culture, including even that of the West.

Facing probing questions concerning Tradition and Modernity from within the Russian Paris community, and building on the reforms of the 1917 Council, an astonishing renewal within the Orthodox Church in the West flowed from the presence of these gifted theologians. Russian Orthodox theologians born in France during the twenties and thirties formed an out-standing group of neo-Patristic scholars who brought a renewed approach to Orthodox Church dogmatic.58 Catholic theologians of the twentieth century,



59 Henri de Lubac, one of the pioneers of twentieth century’s patristic revival in the West. 60 A.M. Allchin, ‘The Worship of the Whole Creation: Merton and the Eastern Fathers’, in Merton & Hesychasm, ed. Jonathan Montaldo (Louisville, KY, 2003), pp. 103-120, p. 106. 61 Ian Ker, ‘The Significance of Newman’s Conversion’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 69 (1995), pp. 433-445. 62 John Zizioulas, born 1931, is Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of Pergamon. He is a noted theologian and key figure in major ecumenical dialogues between the Orthodox Church and other Christian traditions. 63 P. McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. xiv-xv. 64 See M. Plekon, ‘The Sacrament of the Brother/Sister: the Lives and Thought of Mother Maria Skobtsova and Paul Evdokimov’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49/3 (2005), p. 316. 65 B. Osborne, ‘Orthodoxy in a United Europe’, p. 3. On Europe, Political Theology and Ecclesiology: A. O’Mahony, ‘The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiol-ogy in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Churches, 9/3 (2009), pp. 177-194.

some of whom were significant contributors to the Second Vatican Council, Henri de Lubac,59 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, Louis Bouyer and Jean Leclerq,60 formed a movement which also recaptured the theological vision of the early Patristic period before the division between East and West and the rise of scholasticism in the West. John Henry Newman in 1830 launched the forerunner of this movement of ressourcement which arose in France a hundred years later. In Ian Ker’s view, ‘It was the deep study of the Greek …Fathers that formed the basis of Newman’s theology, which was fundamentally Eastern rather than Western in its orientation.’61 It was the return to patristic and scriptural sources that made the Second Vatican Coun-cil possible. Greek Orthodox scholar, John Zizioulas,62 judges that, ‘The first important factor for new, positive and creative developments in Orthodox theology in our century is, rather curiously, the work of “Western” theologi-ans …[The] return to the ancient patristic sources, which has characterised Western theology in our century, is largely responsible for the Orthodox theological renaissance.’63 It has been recognised that the best of Russian Orthodox theology in the twentieth century has been produced outside Rus-sia after 1918 and has been the product of diversity, the meeting of Orthodox theologians with Western theology, churches, culture and societies.64

As a student and professor of history, Clément would have been well aware of the ecclesial ‘“fault line” that runs through Europe’,65 which dates



66 On Florovsky see J. Famerée, ‘Les Limites de l’Église: L’apport de G. Florovsky au dialogue catholique-orthodoxe’, Revue théologique de Louvain, 34 (2003), pp. 137-154. Cf B.A. Gudziak, ‘Towards an Analysis of the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 41-42 (2000-2001), pp. 197-238. 67 J.H. Erickson, ‘The Formation of Orthodox Ecclesial Identity’, St Vladimir’s Theologi-cal Quarterly, 42 (1998), pp. 301-314, p. 311. American Eastern Orthodox scholar and lay theologian Erickson was Dean of the St Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, New York, 2002-2007, and ordained a priest 2007. St Vladimir’s Seminary is associated with the ‘Eucharistic ecclesiology’ as pioneered by the ‘Paris School’ at St Sergius; see interview with J.H. Erickson by J. Shimchick, ‘Fidelity to Living Tradition’, http://www.jacwell.orgFall2003. 68 Osborne, ‘Orthodoxy’, p. 14. 69 Ibid.

from the division of the Roman Empire by Diocletian into Eastern and Western halves. During the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Orthodox theology had entered a time of barrenness, referred to by Georges Florovsky66 as a ‘pseudomorphosis’, during which the Orthodox Church followed the theological development of the Western Latin Church, influenced as it was by Protestant and Catholic polemics. ‘For centuries Orthodox ecclesial identity in its external aspect was formed in the context of Christian divisions, through emulation and contradiction’.67 By the nine-teen-thirties Orthodox theology had returned to its roots, inspired by Flo-rovsky’s proposal of a ‘neo-Patristic synthesis’, a return to the sources, which was also championed by Clément’s friend, Vladimir Lossky, recognised by Clément as a ‘theological master’.

Both Florovsky and Lossky shared the conviction that the Eastern Church had in essence maintained the faith and practice of the Early Church of the Apostles. Florovsky believed that the neo-Patristic synthesis and return to the tradition of the Fathers was ‘a more accurate representation of the divine revelation than that being transmitted by the Western Churches’.68 There is no place for triumphalism because as Florovsky states, the Church is in via.69 These theologians saw the identity of the Orthodox Church as grounded in her sacramental structure yet a ‘living tradition’, maintained by the abiding presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Sergius Bulgakov also argues for the dynamic character of tradition under the influence of the Holy Spirit; however the early Fathers were not infal-lible and were under the influence of the philosophy and historical circum-stances of their era. ‘Theology needs to be contemporary or more precisely,



70 S. Bulgakov, ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’, in Tradition Alive: An Anthology on the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time, ed. M. Plekon (Lanham, MD, 2003), p. 78; cited in Plekon, ‘Relativism and Fundamentalism’, p. 193. 71 M. Plekon, ‘Social Theory Working with Theology: the Case of Sergius Bulgakov as an Example of Living Tradition’, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 47/1-2 (2006), pp. 89-102. 72 Ibid., p. 95. 73 Ibid., p. 96. 74 Cf K. Ware, ‘Introduction’, in Aidan Nichols, Wisdom from Above (Leominster, 2005), pp. ix-x. 75 Gudziak, ‘Analysis’, p. 236 n. 85, quotes K. Ware from an interview in Rome, 1995.

to express religious thought about eternity in time’,70 therefore tradition needed to be in dialogue with modernity. Rather than condemn the West and modernity, Bulgakov saw an opportunity for the Church to be a trans-forming agent of the Holy Spirit. He and other like-minded émigré intel-lectuals shared an ‘openness to the modern world, a willingness to dialogue with the cultures, societies and churches of the West’.71 Bulgakov, dean of St Sergius Institute, profoundly influenced Olivier Clément and his contem-poraries, Afanasiev, Berdiaev, Maria Skobtsova, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Paul Evdokomov, Alexander Men and many others.72 Clément, like Bulgakov, had made the spiritual journey towards conversion to Orthodoxy through the ideologies of socialism and atheism. Other contemporaries outside Orthodoxy were also influenced by Bulgakov’s thought: Congar, Le Guillou, Bouyer, von Balthasar and Rowan Williams.73 Bulgakov, in similar vein to Clément can also be called a passeur, he was able to cross the frontiers between Tradition, modernity and post-modernity to share the treasure of Orthodox thought, while engaging with contemporary Western concerns.74

Berdiaev critiqued Florovsky’s theology for its abstraction from spiritual life and lack of a human dimension; this appears to be supported by the view of Kallistos Ware who assesses Florovsky to be ‘more a guide for intellectuals than a father of spiritual children’.75 In spite of Florovsky’s focus on the words of the Patristic Fathers, it would seem to the exclusion of their ‘works’, he was able to achieve a reorientation of Orthodox theology in the twentieth century to its patristic sources. Nicolas Lossky identifies the perspective of his father (Vladimir) and Florovsky: ‘it is not enough to cite the Fathers; one has to have the same ecclesial experience of God as the Fathers’. There must be a recognition that ‘one is called to be the Fathers of the church for



76 Lossky, ‘Fruitfulness’, pp. 69-70. 77 S. Bulgakov, ‘The Eucharist and the Social Problems of Modern Society’, Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 21 (1933), pp. 13,15, cited by Plekon, ‘Social Theory Working with Theology’, p. 98. 78 Cunningham and Theokritoff, ‘Who are Orthodox Christians?’, p. 11; J. Jillions, ‘Orthodox Christianity in the West’, in Cambridge Companion to the Orthodox Church, pp. 276-291, p. 281. 79 Afanasiev, born in Odessa 1893, died 1966. Afanasiev’s Eucharistic theology returns to the early Patristic sources to understand the Church in relationship with the world and its engagement with the contemporary world and culture. Athenagoras I recommended Afa-nasiev’s appointment as observer at Vatican II where his ecclesiological work influenced the writing of Lumen Gentium. See Aidan Nicols Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanas’ev (1893-1966) (Cambridge, 1989). On Afanasieff, see M. Kaszowski, ‘Sources de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique du P. Nicolas Afanassieff’, Ephe-merides Theologicae Lovanienses, 52 (1976), pp. 331-343.

one’s own time, that is to proclaim for today, in today’s categories the essen-tial of what has been received from the witnesses of all times: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 12:3, 8)’.76

AN ECCLESIOLOGY OF COMMUNION: THE INFLUENCES

Clément’s choice of the Orthodox Church points us to the importance of the ecclesiology and fruitful creativity of the theologians of the Russian dias-pora, to which he was introduced as a young teacher in Paris. For Bulgakov ‘the inspiration of the Eucharist ought to accompany us in all our creative activity in life, and the Liturgy … must be transformed into a liturgy cele-brated outside the temple’.77 Paul Evdokomov, Maria Skobtsova and Elisa-beth Behr-Sigel, spiritual children of Bulgalov, lived out this ‘social ecclesiol-ogy’, active in the French Resistance, as was Clément, and in work with the poor and displaced persons of World War II. As mentioned earlier, a char-acteristic of émigré theology was the notion of sobornost, defined as freedom, unity and conciliarity; it carries the meaning that church life is ‘collaborative and yet hierarchical’ building up the Body of Christ.78 Nicolas Afanasiev79 had set out his theological thesis on Eucharistic theology, that the gathering of the faithful around the Scriptures and eucharistic table forms the Church’s ecclesial identity; this forms the starting point of the ecclesiology of com-munion recognised by most Christian Churches and Confessions today, and is a significant contribution to ecumenical dialogue. Afanasiev’s radical



80 Plekon, Living Icons, pp. 149-150. 81 Clément, Rome Autrement, p. 10. 82 Ibid. 83 O. Clément, ‘Notes autobiographiques’, Contacts, 228 (2009), pp. 407-412. 84 Ibid., p. 412. 85 Ibid.

vision, expressed in his words, ‘the Eucharist makes the Church’, was shared by many contemporary Catholic theologians, including Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar. Significantly Afanasiev’s studies in eucha-ristic ecclesiology were mentioned in Vatican II’s working sessions and drafts for the Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium.80 Clément notes that for Christians of the first centuries there was no ecclesiology per se, but the Church was above all the Body of Christ, ‘the sacrament, or “mystery” as the East says, of the Risen One who raises us. It is the Eucha-rist that makes the Church the Body of Christ’.81 The Eucharist is the ‘mystery of mysteries’.82

In 1958 Clément visited Athenagoras I, Patriarch of Constantinople, at Istanbul where as a service to unity he aimed to publish the dialogues they shared. He considers this to be one of his most important books.83 His two chief aims were to underline the universality of Orthodoxy, but in love and respect for other expressions of faith, and to introduce Orthodoxy to Chris-tians and non-Christians of the West. The patriarch, Clément affirms, deliv-ered him from a fear: in spite of the fact that the Orthodox Church had been an immense light for him and remained so, he became aware how often the Orthodox defined themselves against the other, and pronounced others with differing views as heretics.84 This Clément found quite suffocating as it did not correspond with his own experience of those who were labelled heretics. It must have been redolent of childhood memories of a fractured Christian-ity and society in the Languedoc region, the bitterness this engendered and his father’s rejection of Catholicism. Athenagoras did not ignore the prob-lems but recognised what was positive in difference and looked at others with the eyes of Christ. The patriarch also taught a profound and simple rule for spirituality for everyday life. He was keen to explain that Christianity was not made up of prohibitions but is about ‘fire, creation and illumination’.85 Clément may have always seen Catholicism as being too juridical, especially concerning ethical and sexual problems, but that, he considered, is better



86 Ibid., p. 410. 87 Clément, Dialogues avec le Patriarch Athenagoras, p. 9. 88 Ibid. 89 Jeremiah 14:20. 90 Clément, ‘Notes autobiographiques’, p. 409. 91 Ibid., pp. 410-411.

than saying nothing.86 As he listened to the Patriarch he entered into the rhythms of silence, of respect and of opening so important in the East; Athenagoras’ face appeared as an icon of age and wisdom as he spoke his belief that the depth of things is not ‘nothing’, but love.87 This was a message that Clément knew contemporary society, caught in the nihilism that fol-lowed the carnage of two World Wars, needed to hear; he judged that the West was experiencing a night of the soul, ‘perhaps in the sense of St John of the Cross, a mystical night’,88 or the powerless pagan idols referred to by Jeremiah, which he labels ‘Nothings’,89 all too redolent of the Nothings turned to by a society disenchanted by religion when fearing annihilation and death.

Olivier Clément loved Russian religious thought, but without isolating it either from other forms of Orthodox thought, Byzantine or Syriac for example, or the great Christian theologians and writers of the West. He feels Orthodoxy allowed him to become a Christian and has given him some keys to understand and love other confessions. He was well aware of the quarrels and divisions that erupted in the Russian community in Paris between exponents of religious philosophy, sophiology, neo-patristic syn-thesis and neo-palamite systems of theology, for himself he resisted taking ‘the inquisitorial party line’, rather he wishes to recognise the debt he owes to Vladimir Lossky and Paul Evdokimov and the ‘astonishing intuitions’ of the religious philosophers of the emigration. He sees that opposition leads to caricature, but those who love Christ can find precious sparks of life and truth beyond the systems.90 Orthodoxy opened Clément to a deep under-standing of the meaning of kenosis, the Transfiguration, the Trinity as source of all communion, and of the way of philocalique. Speaking of the joy of repentance, he finds it is impossible for him to separate joy from repentance; his experience of metanoia, the turning of the heart and mind to God, to discover there was no longer death, only separation, was the experience of joy.91



CONCLUSION

Clément was profoundly influenced by the history of divided Christianity in the Languedoc area of his upbringing and the social atheism of his fam-ily. His conversion to Orthodoxy illuminated his understanding of what it is to be human in the light of Christ’s promise of salvation. The Orthodox émigré presence in Paris had far reaching significance for him personally and for the Western Christian world. On the one hand Orthodox theolo-gians and philosophers were stimulated by their contact with the West, and on the other hand, the creative theology of these theologians and their engagement with modernity and its contemporary problems made an impact on Catholic theological thought and the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. Clément became part of the Orthodox Paris School that enriched Christian Churches in Europe and worldwide during the twenti-eth century, fostering an ecclesiology of communion as well as a real and new ecumenism.

As a lay Orthodox theologian and French European, Clément developed distinctive insights into the identity crisis experienced by Western society, and was able to hold out a vision to Christians and non-Christians that replaced the culture of death and nihilism, with one of faith, hope and love. He worked collaboratively with leaders of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, seeking to build strong ties between Christians of the East and West and to reach out to the ‘other’ across denominations, faiths and cul-tures.

Clément can be recognised as a passeur who was able to cross frontiers of faith and intellect, bringing unity to disparate worlds of culture and religion. He can also be recognised as a ‘Contemporary Church Father, between East and West’. In Clément’s view, the Church must not be a separated society, cut off from the world, but must bring to life a dialectic of unity and diversity, as the source of light and life for all life. Olivier Clément’s Eastern Orthodox perspective on Europe and Catholicism makes a unique contribution that continues to raise awareness of the Orthodox Christian presence in the West, and provides an inspiration that motivates a desire for unity between Christians of Eastern and Western Churches.



Abstract

Olivier Clément, French Orthodox lay theologian and writer, achieved acclaim as a significant Christian thinker of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, and pioneer of Orthodox theological renewal. The theologians of the Russian Diaspora in Paris became the catalyst for a fresh encounter of Eastern Ortho-doxy with the West, which enabled Clément as a young historian and atheist to discover Christ. He was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church in Paris in 1951, yet continued to identify deeply with France and Europe; his theo-logical, political and philosophical views were shaped by his own diverse expe-rience of European culture and history. Brought up in a predominantly Protes-tant area of France, Clément had little familiarity with Catholic culture and faith; at first this affected his openness to Catholicism. As he matured he sought a new paradigm for ecumenism through eucharistic ecclesiology, an ecclesiol-ogy of communion, and a synthesis of culture and Christian values.


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